By continuing contradictory policies in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. has ensured that ISIS can reinforce its fighters in those countries and vice versa. So far, Washington has been successful in escaping blame for the rise of ISIS by putting all the blame on the Iraqi government. In fact, it has created a situation in which ISIS can survive and may well flourish.

Saudi Arabia’s listing of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization and the withdrawal of the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Bahrain ambassadors from Qatar signal a big geopolitical realignment in the Middle East.

The onetime CEO of Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank, one Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, is going to jail for five and a half years for his part in his firm’s downfall—which also helped his country’s economy bottom out in 2008. He’ll be in good company.

The Gulf state of Qatar is building sites for the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament on the backs of thousands of Nepalese migrants working in appalling conditions. Dozens died this summer alone, many of them young men felled by heart failure.

For my trouble, on my return to the United States, I was detained at Kennedy Airport in New York by agents of the Department of Homeland Security. Their question for me: Was I planning to fight against U.S. forces in Afghanistan?

Peace talks scheduled to begin Thursday between the United States and the Taliban faltered after the Afghan government complained that the Islamist political group’s newly opened Qatar office would be treated as a government-in-exile.

“The best hope for an end to the killing in Syria is for the United States and Russia to push both sides in the conflict to agree to a ceasefire in which each holds the territory it currently controls,” Patrick Cockburn writes in The Independent.

An activist observer of the negotiations in Doha, Qatar, this week dismissed offers by developed countries as “an empty shell, an insult to our futures. There is literally no point in countries signing up to this sham of a deal, which will lock the planet in to many more years of inaction.”

A new report by a trio of British research and development groups surveys some of the world’s fastest-growing cities with an eye to the vulnerabilities they will face as global warming raises the sea level and temperatures.

For activists, negotiators and journalists interested in a prosperous human future, the U.N. climate negotiations held each year are grueling, emotionally draining events. In a letter to Todd Stern, Obama’s representative at talks going on now in Doha, Qatar, Nikki Hodgson of the Adopt a Negotiator Project captures the mood well.

Despite climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing’s insistence that the U.S. deserves credit for its “enormous” efforts to stall global warming and help poor countries prepare for it, a scientific scorecard showed that the opposite is true.

In 300 B.C., a student of Aristotle observed that humans could change regional temperatures by draining marshes and clearing forests. More than 2,000 years later, a Swede quantified carbon’s role in keeping the planet warm.

Delegates from the Arab League arrived in Syria on Monday in yet another attempt to resolve the crisis that’s only intensified since the Syrian government made the evidently hollow gesture last week of agreeing to stop military-enabled assaults on its own people and allow observation from outside its borders.

Another round of climate negotiations, another vague promise to commit to something in the distant future and another slow-motion step toward disaster for the world’s poor and vulnerable. The Durban deal puts the U.N.’s 194 nations on track to begin negotiating a legally binding pact by 2015, six years after we were told to expect such a treaty in Copenhagen. (more)

Remember the conflict in Syria? You know, the one involving President Bashar al-Assad and the protesters in his country clamoring for regime change? It’s still happening. Some 3,000 Syrians have lost their lives in the struggle, and ... (more)

The World Health Organization reported that babies born in the U.S. are more likely to die in their first month of life than are babies born in 40 other countries, including South Korea, Cuba, Malaysia, Lithuania, Poland and Israel. (more)

Despite the arrest warrant recently issued for him by the International Criminal Court, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has made a defiant move by showing up in Qatar to attend the 21st Arab League summit meeting, at which United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was also slated to appear.

Dr Salim el-Hoss is 80 now but remains a staunch defender of human rights and democracy, an opponent of the death penalty and an outspoken supporter of Palestinians. When I recommended to him a long article on American torture, he read it right through to the end and then put the paper down with a slap on his knee. “Terrible, terrible,” he muttered.

The Mosaic Intelligence Report looks at two welcome developments in the Middle East: On Wednesday, Israel and Syria said they had begun indirect talks in Turkey, the first confirmation in eight years of negotiations between the long-time enemies. On that same day, the Gulf state of Qatar scored a diplomatic coup by pulling off a deal intended to end Lebanon’s protracted crisis.

The Lebanese government and the Hezbollah opposition group came to a power-sharing agreement Wednesday, potentially marking the end to the country’s two-year-old political crisis, which only weeks ago erupted in clashes that left 65 people dead. The move, which some analysts say may benefit Hezbollah more than the Western-backed government, has been hailed by the parties directly involved and others, including the U.S. as well.

Rudy Giuliani likes to pretend that he’s the world’s greatest terrorism fighter, but it turns out that his business empire has contracted with a Qatari sheik who once helped Khalid Sheikh Muhammad escape the FBI. The Village Voice has the goods.